Microsoft Showcases Cloud-Powered Windows 8 People App

Microsoft continues to detail the progress and various features that you can look forward to in Windows 8 on its MSDN blog. The latest entry goes in depth with the new People app, pulling in contacts from various services across the internet and saving them in an easily accessible cloud storage service. That means that after the initial import, you'll be able to access the same contact list across your desktop, smartphone, and laptop.

Users will be able to import contacts from Exchange, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter, covering the whole social networking spectrum. Windows Phone has featured Facebook and Twitter integration for quite a while, but it's interesting to see Microsoft reaffirm its own solution in the face of Apple's new iOS 6 functionality.

The same contact list will be available to Mail and Messaging apps thanks to extensive API use, and Microsoft is working on a tool that will allow you to manually edit or delete duplicate contact entries if they haven't been pulled in correctly. Naturally, the whole thing makes use of the Metro user interface, with contact photos serving as tiles and a simple, clean, and fluid feel. There's plenty of juice information on the blog, so head on over for a lengthy read on all things People in Windows 8.